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    Where Is Bill Forsyth?

    Posted Monday, June 15, 2009 10:34 AM | By Stephen Metcalf
    In the late '70s and early '80s, a Scottish filmmaker named Bill Forsyth made a handful of whimsical comedies.  After shooting a number in and around Glasgow, Forsyth moved on to Hollywood, where he adapted Marylyn Robinson’s acclaimed novel Housekeeping; cut a deft little gem with Burt Reynolds (and a script by John Sayles) called Breaking In; and, finally, wrote and directed Being Human, an ambitious think-comedy—a Charlie Kaufman film before there was a Charlie Kaufman—starring Robin Williams. 

    Nothing I have ever loved so much has ever disappeared so completely as the films of Bill Forsyth. Why?  Forsyth’s L.A. sojourn had come courtesy of David Puttnam, the legendary British producer and then-head of  Columbia Pictures. Puttnam shepherded Forsyth’s Local Hero, as well as the triumphs Chariots of Fire and The Killing Fields. But Oscars and swooning critics never made up for a perceived sniffiness toward American showbiz; and when Puttnam went down, so, too, did Forsyth. Under the new management, Being Human was butchered from a three hour director’s cut down to 85 minutes. A grating voiceover was added. The magnum now fully separated from the opus, Being Human was left to die a critical and popular death.

    Forsyth is regarded as the man who returned contemporary filmmaking to Scotland. And yet, as far as I can tell, he has all but vanished. When the cast and crew of Local Hero—his masterpiece, and the last movie I’d like to watch before wheeling off to eternity—reunited at the Glasgow Film Festival for its silver anniversary, Forsyth did not attend. A washed-out cut of it can be rented on Netflix, along with similarly insulting editions of Housekeeping and Breaking In. Forsyth’s Comfort and Joy, a lovely film about a Glaswegian DJ caught up in an ice cream war, must be watched on …YouTube?

    I encourage you to discover Local Hero. If anyone knows what has recently become of Forsyth, an answer unavailable even to the tentacles of Google, drop me a line; if you know how to move the bigwigs at Criterion to create a box set for a wondrous but misplaced director, e-mail me at sdmetca@yahoo.com.   


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